The Gardens of Anuncia Tickets | Schedule for 2024/2025 Events

The Gardens of Anuncia

The Gardens of Anuncia is a beautiful, funny, and heartfelt musical commissioned by the Old Globe. It is about how the love of family, art, and even hardship can help a person bloom.

The Globe asked five-time Tony Award nominee Michael John LaChiusa to write the book, music, and lyrics for this world-premiere musical, loosely based on the life of director and choreographer Graciela Daniele. With a career like Daniele's, it would be easy to make the show about her journey from Argentina under Perón in the 1940s to the present.

The Story

The Gardens of Anuncia is directed and choreographed by Broadway icon Graciela Daniele and is playing at the Globe Theater. Anuncia takes care of the garden at her country house while she thinks about her life. She remembers her childhood in Argentina under Juan Perón and pays tribute to the women in her family whose sacrifices helped her become an artist. This funny, sad, and beautiful music has a catchy, romantic, and tango-influenced score that sounds like women having a great time being alive.

Production

Enrique Acevedo plays the priest, grandfather, that man, mustache brother, and movie father in "The Gardens of Anuncia." Andréa Burns plays Ta (Lucia), Eden Espinosa plays Mam (Carmen), Carmen Roman plays older Anuncia, Tally Sessions plays the deer and mustache brother, Mary Testa plays Grandmama (Magdalena), and Kalyn West plays younger Anuncia. Summer Broyhill and Joz Vammer are there to fill in during rehearsals.

Mark Wendland did the set design, Toni-Leslie James did the costumes, Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer were lighting designers, Drew Levy was the sound designer, Michael Starobin did the orchestrations, Deborah Abramson did the music direction, Tara Rubin, CSA, and Xavier Rubiano, CSA took care of the casting, and Anjee Nero was in charge of production stage management.

In the musical, many scenes are well-made and attractive. One is when Mami dances the Tango in a romantic scene with great lighting. She loves to dance the Tango because it makes her feel alive. Eden Espinoza, who plays Mami, sings "Malaguena" with much power. Another strange scene involves Older Anuncia and a deer that hangs out in her garden. Tally Sessions funnily plays the deer. He also plays the deer's brother in a later scene, where he tells a sad story about the deer's life.